The Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology is a new network technology depending on the computing capabilities and bandwidths of network participants rather than a few servers, and has been widely applied in file sharing and downloading. For the P2P technology, the download speed at one end is closely related to the upload speed at the other end. However, the upload speed in the widely used Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) networking technology is not fast, but is up to only dozens of KBs per second, further, some users limit the upload speed manually, resulting in the lack of upload bandwidth resources in the P2P technology, and accordingly, users may generally suffer from the relatively slow speed in the P2P technology.
The Peer to Server (P2S) technology is a user-to-server transmission technology, by which the user downloads a file directly from a large download website, where the file is stored in a website server, thereby ensuring a good speed of file downloading, but there are some defects that the resources are dispersive and not easy to search.
The Peer to Server & Peer (P2SP) technology, unlike the conventional technology where the file downloading merely depends on the server, may be used for transmitting contents among various terminals machine in the network. Besides the P2P technology, the P2SP technology also includes a server, which is represented by “S”. Through the P2SP technology, the originally isolated server and its mirror resources as well as the P2P resources are effectively integrated together. Also, the download stability and speed of the P2SP technology are significantly improved as compared with those of the conventional P2P or P2S technology. The P2SP technology is a user-to-server & user mechanism, which is different from any of the P2P technology and the P2S technology in that not only the P2P technology is supported but also server resources are integrated together with P2P resources by searching a database; and when a user is downloading a file, other resources are automatically searched so that a proper resource is selected for acceleration, thus, the download stability and speed of the P2SP technology are significantly improved as compared with those of the P2P technology.
During the downloading, if a user finds and desires to share or send a good download source and address to others, the following manners may be used:
(1) online transmission through an instant messaging software;
(2) asynchronous transmission through an email;
(3) transmission of various download resources and links through various social platforms for sharing; and
(4) local publishing of resources, that is, a local file is uploaded to a transit server and a temporary link is generated and transmitted to a friend, so that the friend may download the file as desired.
For example, in the case of sharing on a microblog platform, a file can be directly shared via a microblog so that the file may be downloaded by the fans in time, thus the file may be shared more quickly; or, good resources can also be published via the microblog, so that the number of fans may be increased with the increase of downloading and forwarding times. As a fast growing content platform, the microblog can be used to quickly broadcast and spread resources, especially in a geometrical progression; and at present, each of the mainstream download tools and platforms provides an entry for sharing on the microblog, which will be increasingly popular with the advancement of the microblog open platform.
In the P2SP technology, a file may be downloaded from data sources including an original link, a P2P network and an auxiliary source mirrored by a third party; and then, the file is obtained by assembling data together in series according to the unique identifier (such as MD5 or SHA) of the complete file. At present, FIG. 1 shows the flowchart of the specific publishing of P2SP download, specifically including the following Steps S101-S106:
At Step S101, a download client acquires a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link from the Internet or a resource website when needing to download a file.
At Step S102, with the use of the URL link as an entry, the download client queries multiple resources and file Hash values from a resource index server and then downloads data from the queried URL link.
At Step S103, after completing the download, the download client registers file information to a tracker server.
At Step S104, other download clients query the peers having completed the download and the Peers in performing the download from the tracker server.
At Step S105, the other download clients start multi-resource P2P download and exchange data with the peers.
At Step S106, the related statistical information is reported to a statistical server after the download is completed.
Because of copyrights and laws, a lot of contents involving copyrights have been removed and taken offline from many download websites, and the address of an original file entry for the download by the users generally comes from the spreading among the friends of various Social Networking Services (SNS) sharing platforms, microblog platforms and instant messaging tools.
Such spreading among friends is characterized by a fast spreading speed, a wide spreading scope and flexible examination rules for spread contents.
The applicant found at least the following problems in the prior art during the implementation of the embodiments of the present invention:
1: The contents spread between friends and the whole spreading process thereof are not controlled by the download platform, and the risk of spreading illegal information exists due to the lack of an audit function.
2: The contents spread between friends and the download link spreading process are not traceable, for example, the contents in a network disk can be shared with microblog friends by an external microblog link, and the generated external microblog link can be directly published to a microblog without nay restraint, likely resulting in illegal content spreading.
3: The contents are spread very fast between the notified friends and the receiving group is uncertain, so that problems such as infringement of the spread contents and spreading of illegal contents may be caused; and once the contents are spread widely, such spreading cannot be controlled easily.